
n,iss FVT^E 

Book___J 

Copghl N° 



COHYHIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Elje Ingcrsoll Hectare, 1906 



THE 
HOPE OF IMMORTALITY 

OUR REASONS FOR IT 



BY 
CHARLES FLETCHER DOLE 

AUTHOR OF "THE COMING PEOPLE," "THEOLOGY 

OF CIVILIZATION," "THE RELIGION OF 

A GENTLEMAN," ETC. 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 



[library of congress" 

Two Copies Rectived 

SEP 21 1906 

r* Copyright Entry 

COPY B. *> [ 



Copyright, 1906, 
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 



Published, October, 1906. 



THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIP 



Extract from the will of Miss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll, 

who died in Keene, County of Cheshire, New 

Hampshire, Jan. 26, f8<pj. 

First In carrying out the wishes of my late 
beloved father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll, as 
declared by him in his last will and testament, I 
give and bequeath to Harvard University in 
Cambridge, Mass., where my late father was 
graduated, and which he always held in love and 
honor, the sum of Five thousand dollars ($5000) 
as a fund for the establishment of a Lectureship 
on a plan somewhat similar to that of the Dud- 
leian lecture, that is — one lecture to be deliv- 
ered each year, on any convenient day between 
the last day of May and the first day of Decem- 
ber, on this subject, "the Immortality of Man," 
said lecture not to form a part of the usual col- 
lege course, nor to be delivered by any Professor 
or Tutor as part of his usual routine of instruc- 
tion, though any such Professor or Tutor may be 
appointed to such service. The choice of said 
lecturer is not to be limited to any one religious 
denomination, nor to any one profession, but 
may be that of either clergyman or layman, the 
appointment to take place at least six months 
before the delivery of said lecture. The above 
sum to be safely invested and three-fourths of 
the annual interest thereof to be paid to the 
lecturer for his services and the remaining fourth 
to be expended in the publishment and gratui- 
tous distribution of the lecture, a copy of which 
is always to be furnished by the lecturer for such 
purpose. The same lecture to be named and 
known as " the Ingersoll lecture on the Immor- 
tality of Man." 



PREFACE 

I have undertaken in the following 
pages to state as simply as possible the 
reasons that urge me to a belief in the 
reality of the immortal life. It may be 
of interest to readers if I say a few 
words at the beginning about the "per- 
sonal equation " in my own case. It has 
always been extremely easy for me to see 
the difficulties that arise in the way of a 
belief in immortality. I have taken pains 
never to escape the sight of these diffi- 
culties, but rather to seek them out and 
measure them at their full value. I am 
unhappy if I have an intimation that 
there lies somewhere any formidable con- 
sideration, with which I am not familiar, 
touching an important subject. I hold 
that no man knows one side or aspect 
of a question, unless he knows its other 

sides also. 

iii 



iv Preface 

Moreover, perhaps by some fault of 
temperament, I do not happen to have 
the intense yearning that many profess 
for an endless existence. I feel about a 
future life as one might feel in regard 
to setting forth upon an untried voyage; 
for example, to some distant star. So far 
as I have confidence that I am a citizen 
of a rational universe, I can conceive that 
the unknown voyage will be worth all the 
trouble it may cost. The venture stirs 
my interest. But otherwise, I have little 
sense of clinging to life, merely in order 
to live. Thus, though I heartily enjoy 
life, " taking it all in all," yet I have no 
eager desire to live however comfortably 
to great age, and I should distinctly dep- 
recate for myself or for others the fulfil- 
ment of a certain noted Russian biologist's 
prophecy that mankind may learn to ex- 
tend the average lifetime to a hundred 
and fifty years! 

So far, then, as I feel desire for life, 
the desire is that my life may count for 



Preface v 

something, and have use or value. Why- 
should any one care to have existence at 
all, unless his life contributes in some way 
to the sum of the worth of the universe ? 
Life, now and here, interests me, because 
it is social; that is, we are each able to 
serve, help, and enrich one another, and to 
increase the total wealth and welfare of 
humanity. It is only on some such terms 
as these that life seems worth living any- 
where. 

I have asked myself whether I would 
not be content if I might in some way 
pass over into that " immortality of in- 
fluence" of which we sometimes hear. 
I think that I could be content, provided 
this were the best use to which I could 
be put, and provided this influence itself 
were more than a breath destined to pass 
away forever as soon as our tiny planet 
cools away. In other words, we can bear 
death, for ourselves, if we are not wanted 
anywhere. But we do wish to be able to 
respect the world we live in, and we could 



vi Preface 

hardly respect a universe that created a 
Socrates, a Michael Angelo, or an Epicte- 
tus only to destroy him, as the early gods 
are reputed to have devoured their own 
offspring. 

This brings me frankly to confess to a 
certain bias. I own that the more I know 
about life, the more I desire to discover 
rationality in it. I had rather be a citizen 

1 for even a brief period in a significant and 
intelligent world than to live forever in a 

^meaningless world. I had rather be able 
to look out for one day on the possibilities 
of an infinite universe than to possess mil- 
lenniums circumscribed within bounds of 
time and place. I cannot help this kind 
of bias. It seems to be involved in the 
nature of mind. Other men gladly make 
the same confession. Here is one of the 
facts of human nature that thought has to 
reckon with. 

It is as if there were something in 
us, like Prometheus in the ancient myth, 
that says in the face of all merely brute 



Preface vii 

powers : Break us down if you choose ; 
annihilate us ; yet we are more and greater 
than you; we defy you to hurt us. For 
we are the offspring of reason, and our 
supreme desire is toward the good and the 
beautiful. What a marvellous thing, on 
any ground, that such a conception has 
entered into Man's mind ! 

I have owned to a certain bias. Does 
the fact of such a bias constitute a 
disqualification against the student, the 
investigator, or the thinker who frankly 
acknowledges it and makes allowance 
accordingly ? I think not. A man con- 
sults a physician upon the question of his 
health. He has a bias in favor of being 
found constitutionally sound. All the 
more careful is he to choose an expert 
physician, who will make no mistake even 
in favor of pronouncing him well. He 
will insist that his physician shall tell him 
the whole truth. 

In fact, the very word " philosophy " 
implies a bias. One of its roots means 



viii Preface 

love. The true philosopher loves order, 
rationality, beauty, unity, goodness. He 
has a faith, that is, a bias toward belief 
that truth will be found one with the good. 
He is all the more bound, because of this 
bias, to insist on the whole truth and noth- 
ing but the truth. Like the man who ties 
his boat to its mooring, he is bound to test 
the holding power of his rope. If he can 
break it, he has no use for it. So the man 
who loves truth is never afraid to put it to 
rigorous tests. If he can break it down, 
he has no longer use for it. 

I am aware that all this involves a ma- 
jestic assumption. We suppose that there 
is such a reality as truth ; we suppose that 
we live in a reasonable or logical world, 
and that our thinking follows certain in- 
tellectual laws. We suppose that our 
philosophical bias in favor of order and 
unity, like our instinct toward food, is a 
part of the reality of the world. We sup- 
pose that the sense of duty to follow truth, 
which honest men everywhere recognize, 



Preface ix 

is also real. If this is " reasoning in a 
circle/' it is the only possible mode of 
reasoning. 

We are able, however, to throw our 
minds "out of gear," and to suppose in- 
valid our splendid assumption of a realm 
of order and reality. We can become 
thoroughgoing agnostics. What happens 
now? It follows that we have ceased 
for the time to be thinkers. We have 
got out of the world of logic into a 
dream world where no logic binds things 
together. Talk about " truth " as we may, 
we cease to feel any obligations to follow 
truth or speak truth. Terms and words 
that had meaning and value before, such 
as right and duty, now fade out of sight. 
All that remains to us is to be observers 
of sensations. To become thinkers again 
means to take up the old assumption, and 
to go on again as if we belonged to the 
ideal realm of logic, order, beauty, truth, 
duty, and unity. 

Surely no one claims that the attitude of 



x Preface 

intellectual agnosticism, except as a tem- 
porary experiment, is wholesome or fruit- 
ful. It is like holding one's breath, — a 
desirable power to use on occasion. But 
the moral and ideal life is always surging 
in us and compelling us to breathe. The 
more deeply we breathe, the more fully we 

live. 

U 



THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY: 
OUR REASONS FOR IT 

There are doubtless more people to-day 
than ever before in the history of the world 
who are in doubt whether they have any 
right to hope for immortality. Sometimes, 
they want so much to believe as to be re- 
luctant to open the question at all or to 
face any facts which may seem to militate 
against their faith. Nevertheless, they are 
not comfortable in this irrational unwilling- 
ness to think about or discuss the greatest 
of subjects. Others have a vague idea that 
the hope of immortality is a matter of sen- 
timent or blind faith, but not quite respec- 
table in the realm of intelligence. Even 
high-minded men seem to feel that a duty 
to truth may compel them to smother a 
natural longing in their hearts to believe 
in immortality. They do not fairly credit 



2 The Hope of Immortality 

the possibility that reason, truth, and reality 
may lie on the side of this hope and not 
against it. 

Still further, men are very shy of the 
supposed teachings of science. They are 
shocked to hear that certain scientific men 
doubt or disbelieve in immortality. Thus, 
it was remarked after a certain Ingersoll 
Lecture upon Immortality at Harvard Uni- 
versity that the faces of the listeners, as 
they went out of the hall, bore a look of 
sadness, as if they had heard the death 
sentence pronounced. Did these people 
really expect that a man of science could 
bring chemical or physical facts to throw 
any light on the problem of immortality ? 

The fact is, that we are all on one level 
as regards the great questions that concern 
our common humanity. The study of an- 
cient documents, acquaintance with Greek 
or Hebrew, familiarity with the terms of 
philosophy, expert knowledge of soils or 
material elements, no more than high office 
in church or state, gives a man special 



The Hope of Immortality 3 

standing above his fellows to tell them 
what they ought to do, or what they must 
believe, or what limit they must set to 
their ideals or their hopes. The ordinary 
observer thousands of years ago knew 
practically as much as the most learned 
physician knows to-day about the fact of 
death. To all visible appearances it ended 
life then as now. Nevertheless, in the face 
of all appearances to the contrary, hosts of 
people, both the unlettered and the thought- 
ful, have believed, and still believe, that 
death is not the end of man. It is pos- 
sible to trace the development and the his- 
tory of the phases of this extraordinary 
belief. But before the main question, 
whether or not this vast trend of belief 
points to a reality, the expert man of 
science only can say as he does say, that 
if his science gives him no reason to urge 
in the affirmative, it likewise gives him no 
knowledge more than the rest of us have 
to the contrary. The supreme condition 
for wise and sane thinking here — the 



4 The Hope of Immortality 

same as on every subject touching human 
welfare — is the fullest possible under- 
standing of the facts that constitute and 
characterize human life, both as it com- 
monly is and at its highest and best. We 
want also the largest intellectual hospi- 
tality and fearlessness. 

There are certain concessions which must 
occur to every one who begins to think 
about immortality. Let us range them up 
in clear sight and discover frankly how 
weighty they are. Doubtless if we knew 
nothing else but these things, we should 
not dream of immortality. 

In the first place, modern science has 
in no respect changed, for better or worse, 
the ordinary doctrine of plain common 
sense touching the fact of physical death. 
To the unaided senses death is death, the 
cessation of all consciousness. No one cer- 
tainly is able to see how life can continue. 

Moreover, so far as any apparent evi- 
dence goes for the continued existence of 
myriads of " souls " or "spirits," who have 



The Hope of Immortality 5 

passed through the gate of death, this evi- 
dence is of the most meagre character. 
No one can show that such a mode of con- 
tinued life is impossible. But most of 
us, not being trained as detectives, are 
obliged to wait for the discovery of modes 
of communication that will bridge the gulf 
that now surely seems to divide "the 
quick " from " the dead." Meanwhile 
the general style of the alleged messages 
from the spirit-world is not such as to 
make continued existence there seem pre- 
cious or desirable by comparison with the 
best actual values of life in this world. It 
is pathetic to suppose the wisest and best 
among "the. mighty dead "are so help- 
lessly balked in their desires to reach their 
earthly friends as at the most only to con- 
vey to them dreary platitudes and triviali- 
ties, — the mere echoes of what we have 
already heard. 

It might be said that one tremendous 
event in human history — the resurrection 
of Jesus — ought to set aside all question. 



6 The Hope of Immortality 

It is a striking fact that during the ages 
when few perhaps doubted the story of 
the resurrection, the fear of death weighed 
on men's minds as at no other period. 
Few out of millions seem really to have 
taken pleasure in the hope of immortality. 
The time has now come when a man, 
even though he be a member of a Chris- 
tian church, wants more than the tradition 
of an event far away in time and space, 
which itself needs to be demonstrated. 
Men feel as an old minister in Boston 
once remarked to a friend, " I wish as 
long as I live to cling to the belief in the 
resurrection of Jesus, but I do not see how 
the next generation can do this. " And they 
probably add, as this minister did, " I am 
very thankful that my hope in immortality 
does not depend upon the resurrection. " 
It is at least highly significant that when 
a notable leader in a great evangelical 
church, Dr. George A. Gordon, presents 
his best thought in his book, " The Wit- 
ness to Immortality, " he takes pains to 



The Hope of Immortality J 

establish the theistic faith by philosophy, 
before he adduces his reasons for believ- 
ing in the resurrection of Jesus. Neither 
is it common for the professors in theolog- 
ical schools to make immortality stand 
or fall upon the testimony of the men 
and women who are reputed in the Gos- 
pels to have seen Jesus after his death. 
For throughout history too many marvel- 
lous stories of like events have been told 
to permit us to rest any precious convic- 
tion upon such testimony. At any rate, 
whether we like it or not, we must con- 
cede that this is the habitual attitude of 
the modern mind. To state it in positive 
terms, we are convinced that the only sure 
ground for the hope of immortality must 
be in the fact that we are in some true 
sense immortal by nature. For unless we 
thus possess immortality, no miracle could 
demonstrate this fact. 

Again, we admit that no one can see 
how the transition can be made into any 
other life than this which we here know — 



8 The Hope of Immortality 

a life involved at every breath and thought 
with the senses and physical conditions. 
This element of utter mystery is already 
contained in the present life. Who knows 
at all how it is enabled to proceed ? Who 
knows even what the senses are of which 
we lightly speak ? Who in this era of 
astounding transition regarding all physi- 
cal theory can draw a line between matter 
and mind, or even say that the most solid 
material is not in reality as subtle, elusive, 
and invisible as thought is, or will, or 
spirit ? Who shall say that spirit is not 
the more comprehensive word, rather 
than matter or physics ? Everything goes 
to show this as likely. The question of 
the " how, " pushed far enough, would 
seem no more to threaten the splendid pos- 
sibilities of an immortal life than it threat- 
ens to destroy the actuality of our present 
existence. 

We must add that we frankly call im- 
mortality a hope. This is what it has 
usually been, and what it is quite possible 



The Hope of Immortality 9 

that it always must remain. From its 
nature it must be a hope. So far as it 
lies in the future it is beyond our sight. 
If it means little, — the playing of harps 
and pianos and endless gossip, — we might 
be told by one of its messengers what it 
is like. But the more it means, the less 
could any one — even God himself — tell 
us in advance what or how it may be. 
In this respect it would only follow the 
analogy of the profoundest experiences of 
the present life. Who could have made 
known to us beforehand the mysteries, 
and yet the indisputable facts, of friend- 
ship, of fatherhood or motherhood, of the 
high joys of art and poetry ? 

It follows, doubtless, that our minds 
may sway on this subject, as on other sub- 
jects of human interest, all the way from 
more or less wonder and uncertainty to 
various degrees of conviction and confi- 
dence. Some may even sway back and 
forth from a positive to a negative atti- 
tude. Few minds, perhaps, rest solidly 



10 The Hope of Immortality 

either on the side of the denial of immor- 
tality, or again on the side of such abso- 
lute belief, as, for example, Theodore 
Parker and Tennyson were wont to ex- 
press. Even Whittier seems to have 
wavered in his belief. The fact of such 
wavering on the part of many minds may 
as well be frankly admitted. It seems to 
be a law governing our changing moods, 
that when we suffer depression, our con- 
cern, whether with or without adequate 
ground, touches the subject that we care 
most for. Even the millionnaire may thus 
apprehend that he is coming to want. 

Once more, it must be confessed to be 
a burden upon our thought of immortality 
that there are so many of us. No one 
now knows how long the world has been 
the habitation of man, but the increasing 
succession of the generations of human 
beings of all ages and degrees of intelli- 
gence, from the level of animals upward, 
quite baffles our imagination. And yet tre- 
mendous as is the burden of our thought, 



The Hope of Immortality n 

the fundamental weight of the mystery 
consists in the fact which we all admit; 
namely, this vast procession of toiling, suf- 
fering, aspiring human lives. We have 
not only the question, What will be- 
come of them ? but the question, Why are 
they here on this vast march of life at all ? 

Let me pass on to present as rapidly as 
possible the great sweep of the reasons 
that forever, and always more and more 
powerfully, impel the mind to the hope of 
immortality. 

First, I am impressed with the fact that 
man's life not only belongs to the realm of 
the senses and what we call material things, 
but it belongs essentially, in respect to all 
that most concerns us as human, to the in- 
visible realm of thought or spirit. What- 
ever we name this realm of being, even 
if we shy at such a makeshift word as 
" spirit " to describe it, the fact faces us 
that we are men, not merely by virtue of 
the circulation of blood in our veins, but 



12 The Hope of Immortality 

by virtue of feelings, ideas, aspirations, 
convictions, states of consciousness, which 
cannot be weighed or measured, but which 
are at least as real as anything that we 
can see or touch. We play with numbers, 
we poetize, we behold visions of beauty, 
we love and we forgive, we dream of hu- 
man welfare to be worked out centuries 
beyond our time ; we philosophize over 
vast schemes of optimism or pessimism. 
This is simply to say that we inhabit an 
ideal or spiritual realm. 

We need not now enter into the ques- 
tion of what this realm of spirit is. We 
need not insist that there is any division 
between it and the realm where visible 
" things " appear and animals breathe and 
move. Grant, if you choose, that some 
profound underlying substance makes the 
realm of spirit one with the realm of 
matter. We only say that the realm 
of thought and spirit exists. You can- 
not live a human life and ignore it. 
Its facts are at least as real as any facts 



The Hope of Immortality 13 

are. That they cannot be measured by the 
instruments of the laboratory does not 
touch their validity. We know that we 
love our children, when we cannot even 
see their faces, much less see the motion 
of our love. The idea or hope of immor- 
tality obviously belongs in this realm of 
man's life. Whatever you think of it, it 
is on this range and not on the range of 
food values that we have to discuss it. 

Next, it occurs to us that the presence 
and prevalence of the idea of immortality 
in such a world as this is a wonderful 
thing. It is wonderful if the spiritual in- 
terpretation of the universe is true. But 
it is also wonderful, if this is only a ma- 
terial world and the idea of immortality 
has not a shred of reality behind it. I am 
aware of the nature of the hints and sugges- 
tions through which students of the child- 
hood of the race tell us that this idea may 
have grown up. Grant all that they say. 
The idea in itself is none the less magnifi- 



14 The Hope of Immortality 

cent and wonderful. Suppose it to have 
been born on the side of man's senses and 
out of material environment. The wonder 
is that it found a sort of soil in man's 
mind to grow in and to become what it 
is now at its highest, — a majestic and 
daring hope, free of selfishness, noble and 
ennobling, setting aside all bounds of 
space and time. This is a most extraordi- 
nary product to come out of the mere play 
of animal tissue ! You can no more ex- 
plain it in this blundering way than you 
can explain your conviction of a proposi- 
tion in geometry or any other profound 
fact of consciousness by the motion of 
particles in your brain. The movement 
of the particles, whatever it may be, is 
subordinate to the spiritual reality which 
they only serve to image or register. Why 
do atoms of matter so move together as to 
register and impress thoughts and ideas ? 

Again, it is worth while to pass over on 
occasion to the side of absolute scepticism, 



The Hope of Immortality 15 

and to look over the precipice which, in 
the denial of the hope of immortality, now 
awaits the mind. The mind is not between 
a difficult belief and an easy doubt. The 
doubt is itself gigantic. Can we believe 
that the march of all the generations of 
mankind has been the way of death only ? 
Can we believe that the noblest and holi- 
est, the grand men of genius, the leaders 
and helpers of mankind, have perished like 
so many cattle ? Then we must translate all 
life into the terms of final death. "The 
Choir Invisible," and everything else, dis- 
appears and " leaves not a wrack behind." 
The more we contemplate this negative in- 
terpretation of the universe, the more tre- 
mendous is the strain on our intelligence. 
Scepticism becomes at least as difficult as 
faith seemed to be. 

The fact is, this is a world of values 
with all sorts of gradations upward. 
The more we investigate and ponder, the 
more clearly these values emerge and 



1 6 The Hope of Immortality 

indeed become necessary to thought. It is 
a workable theory of the world that its 
chief use, and happiness, and aim, so far 
as man is concerned, consists in learning 
values and knowing how to direct them. 
The child or the savage plays with count- 
ers and beads. Presently he learns the 
uses of all sorts of tools and building ma- 
terials. Why does he build and learn to 
toil ? His eyes are now toward the mean- 
ing of home and citizenship, of friendship 
and love, of justice, mercy, and humanity. 
The happiness of a Franklin, for instance, 
rises from indulgence in sensual things to 
a quite new value of happiness ; namely, 
the desire to do good, that sets all sensual 
things under his feet. There is a limit to 
the lower kind of values. You can buy 
them off with other values of their own 
kind, or you can exhaust them. There is 
really no limit to the values that appear in 
the realm of the spirit. You cannot buy 
a mother's love or a patriot's devotion. 
You cannot exhaust the justice in a com- 



The Hope of Immortality iy 

munity by overdrafts. There is doubtless 
what must be called, for want of any bet- 
ter term, an " infinite" element in the higher 
ranges of values, as if gold and jewels 
were but figures and images to set these 
nobler values forth. It is the mark of 
manhood or intelligence, not to doubt this, 
but rather to recognize it. 

The idea of immortality is an assertion 
of the indestructible worth of the values 
that characterize humanity at its best. 
The lower values, even force and motion 
and the atoms of matter, appear to persist, 
even while they change their forms. At 
any rate, they effect something in exact 
proportion to their bigness. They all make 
the way and lead up to the fruitage of the 
universe in its high values of truth, wis- 
dom, justice, and good will. To affirm " im- 
mortality" is simply to say that in a world 
where other and lower values all accom- 
plish something, and pass on and up in the 
trend of their action, where even a grain 
of sand on the seashore has its place and 



1 8 The Hope of Immortality 

does not exist for naught, where the spring 
flower has its chance to die in order to live 
again in the form of fruit at the harvest, 
the greatest of all values, to which the 
others are mere counters, must likewise 
go on in their proper sphere and not come 
to naught. My mind, as it takes the path 
of least resistance, is forced to take this 
track in its thought. What hopeless con- 
fusion of all that we know about values it 
would be, if we had to think that after a 
few aeons, while the frozen earth still kept 
every atom intact and registered in its ma- 
terial every impact of force, all the high 
values that had made it once worth while 
to study its elements and its forces — the 
humane and spiritual values that men had 
been working out with their toil, their tears, 
their blood, had utterly vanished ! This is 
to say that all virtue and goodness have 
the worth of the pigment of a rose leaf, or 
the tint of a summer cloud. Our intelli- 
gence reacts from such a doctrine. Our 
intelligence then reacts toward the idea 
of immortality. 



The Hope of Immortality 19 

There is no such thing as justice, or 
truth, or love, in the abstract. All these 
are the terms by which we describe per- 
sons. Where no persons are, there is no 
conceivable thought, or righteousness, or 
will, either good or bad. Expel if you 
can the idea of personality from the uni- 
verse, and it is doubtful whether anything 
would be left, for everything appears to 
exist in some relation or other to conscious 
and intelligent, that is personal, life. What 
is force that represents no directing will ? 
What is matter, except the crude stuff with 
which intelligence shapes thought and 
expresses itself ? There is no intelligible 
attribute or quality in things, in weight 
or color or taste, except as some person 
either uses or perceives the attribute. Its 
existence has no significance without an 
intelligence; that is, a person into whose 
consciousness it can enter. This is to say, 
that the visible world somehow fits into the 
spiritual fact of personality, and the universe 
breaks up with personality taken out of it. 



20 The Hope of Immortality 

Be this as it may, it is evident that im- 
mortality is and must be personal immor- 
tality. There is often haziness of thought 
on this point, as if personal qualities might 
be immortal and persons cease to be. What, 
for example, would become of " immortal " 
righteousness in a world where no persons 
existed ? How does any one suppose an 
abstract immortal " influence " would leap 
out of a dead planet to effect action in 
some star in the system of Sirius ? 

When we speak of personality, however, 
we tread in the realm of mystery. There 
is nothing so real and precious. We are 
as sure of our personality as we are of any 
fact, but it cannot be weighed or measured, 
and it can hardly be described. It is as 
mysterious in man as it is in the thought 
of God, no more and no less. It does not 
consist in bodily form, but it shines through 
the form and uses it, as God may be con- 
ceived to shine through and to use the 
structure of the universe. The most that 
we know about it in man is that it is not 



The Hope of Immortality 21 

complete, but is something in the process 
of making. It is hardly observable at 
birth ; it is normally most evident at the 
end of man's career. It distinguishes man 
from all other animals ; for while they and 
he begin alike and have much in common, 
and while no one can dogmatize as to the 
limits of their possibilities, man alone rises 
to the possession of actual, though still 
imperfect, personality. Every little child 
and the lowest savage possess at least 
potentialities in this direction. 

We know true personality best in the 
well-developed and highest types of men, 
as we know fruit best when it is really 
ripe. There have been men and women 
throughout human history who have been 
true, generous, faithful unto death, fear- 
less, and kind. These qualities alone 
would not perhaps have constituted them 
persons. What makes their personality is 
a certain unity in their lives, whereby all 
their experiences and their acts tend to 
become harmonized, as it were, and to 



22 The Hope of Immortality 

move in one direction. If the atom may- 
be considered as a tiny centre or vortex 
of force, we can by a parable say that the 
life of a person is some such centre of 
spiritual force. Let us call this spiritual 
force love or good will. The noblest life 
is doubtless that in which all its powers 
and gifts — the more of them, the better — 
move in unison with the ruling good will. 
Here is a kind of life on which you can 
depend ; it will not disappoint you ; it will 
grow more noble and consistent ; it will 
increase in its momentum ; it is a thing of 
beauty ; all men love and admire it. 

Grant for a moment that there had been 
only one such life of a refined and all- 
round person ; it would be the most won- 
derful and significant human fact that men 
could study. No investigation of physical 
things could begin to be so interesting and 
important as the evolution of a single com- 
plete, normal, and ripened life. Here is 
one who has the secret of happiness ; 
here is promise of finding out to what 



The Hope of Immortality 23 

man may attain. Is it possible to develop 
other mature and normal lives, such as this 
was ? The fact is, that we have not only 
a single life worthy to be called a true 
person ; we have an increasing number 
of such lives. We are accumulating the 
biographies of a legion of noble person- 
alities. There were never so many pro- 
duced as in the past century. We begin 
to see the human conditions upon which 
their development depends. They are 
largely spiritual conditions. No man can 
be accounted a student of science who 
would neglect the consideration of these 
facts of personality. Do we not believe 
in personality ? If not, what do we believe 
in, or what value is there in studying the 
processes of life and not coming to the 
secret of life itself ? 

Let us consider a moment the extraor- 
dinary impression that the righteous or 
noble personality always makes on our 
minds, and this in its fulness, the more 
mature we are ourselves. Take the 



24 The Hope of Immortality 

instance of Jesus. It is not necessary to 
believe that his risen body passed through 
closed doors and appeared to his disciples. 
The deeper fact is that his person seemed 
to those who knew him to be above the 
range of death. That which constituted 
him a person was not that which died. 
We are not speaking in this instance of 
some evanescent quality, like the perfume 
of a flower, but of that which was the 
heart and essence of the man's being, his 
very self. Such is the nature of the per- 
son at its best. There is no word to call 
it by that seems more accurately to de- 
scribe it than the term "immortal." This 
word alone carries the impression which 
such a life makes on beholders. We 
are not saying that this impression must 
therefore be true, but we are inclined 
to think that, if all lives were so complete 
as some whom we have heard of and 
known, no one would doubt that man is 
"immortal." 



The Hope of Immortality 25 

We tend to believe that this is a world 
of purpose. This is only to think that the 
universe must have significance. A pur- 
poseless universe seems to us contemp- 
tible. It may be said that our own minds 
impress this idea upon us, and the desire 
to find purpose creates our belief. But 
our minds are themselves the outgrowth 
or the children of the universe. The na- 
ture of intelligence is to seek order, signifi- 
cance, purpose. It cannot be irrational 
to trust this character of our minds. It 
would look as if the highest faculty in us 
answered to the highest fact of the uni- 
verse. The contrary supposition certainly 
reduces all thought to mockery. 

Now, the idea of immortality is almost 
the only means of expressing our thought 
of a purposeful universe. To say that the 
highest values do not die, to say that noble 
persons go on in their personality, to think 
that the universe exists to manifest and to 
develop this order of life, is to affirm a 
purpose worthy of the universe. Is there 



26 The Hope of Immortality 

any other conceivable purpose ? If so, 
what is it? For a universe of mere ever- 
lasting succession of shifting phenomena 

is not a rational universe. 

c 

To believe in a purposeful universe is to 

believe in the integrity of the universe; 
namely, that it is one, that it is orderly, 
and that it can be depended upon. All 
^science really proceeds upon this faith. It 
is " faith," for though it grows out of our 
own experience and observation, we can- 
not absolutely demonstrate it. All philoso- 
phy is the attempt to think the facts of 
the world and of life into some harmony 
and unity. The very word "universe/* 
that we use so glibly, is the expression of 
a conviction or faith in the integrity of the 
world. It would be strange and unreason- 
able to use this word to sum up the result 
of our impressions of visible or material 
things, and then, just where the interpre- 
tations of visible things touch the life of 
man, to stop saying "the universe," and 
to reduce the realm of human or spiritual 



The Hope of Immortality 27 

facts to chaos. We are possessed by the 
intellectual necessity, if we think of a uni- 
verse at all, to think of it so throughout. 
The profound facts of human personality 
must belong to the integrity of the uni- 
verse and must be safeguarded and not 
brought to confusion by its laws. This is 
just what we mean when we utter our hope 
of immortality. There is that in the uni- 
verse which does not merely play with 
man's life, which does not create its off- 
spring, — Isaiah, Jesus, Dante, Lincoln, — 
and then blindly dash them to pieces, like 
foam on the beach. Such is our instinc- 
tive idea of the integrity of the world, with- 
out the faith in which both science and 
philosophy lose their way. 

To affirm our belief in the integrity of 
the world is also to conceive that we are 
ourselves a part of that integrity and that 
we partake of its nature; I mean, of 
course, at our best, and as we become 
more completely persons. We differ herein 



28 The Hope of Immortality 

by a great height from the merely ani- 
mal life. We share with the animals in 
the elements which compose our bodies, 
but we are lifted above the animal world 
in the sense of the order, the beauty, the 
intelligence, the movement and evolution 
of life, the conception of purpose — all 
that constitutes ideal, intellectual, or spir- 
itual integrity. We are as much children 
of the universe on this most rational side 
of it, as we are its children on the side of 
our physical environment. 

Men sometimes ask whether, if man is 
immortal, he must not always have existed? 
We may well afford to let this mystery 
pass. The main fact is, that in all that 
makes man most human he seems to par- 
take, now and here, of that spiritual sub- 
stance which conceives, ordains, and creates 
the world. He enters into the vastness, the 
complexity, and the unity of its scheme as 
if it were a drama unrolled for his under- 
standing and his delight. He and the 
great Dramatist must be akin. For it is 



The Hope of Immortality 29 

not credible that man made the drama out 
of his dreams. Whence then the dreams ? 

It is a world of startling possibilities. 
The last hundred years have witnessed an 
astonishing series of developments on the 
physical side. The most extraordinary 
predictions have come true. The most 
unexpected powers have been developed, 
as if men had only to turn them on and 
use them. The most hidden secrets have 
opened up to light. The range of mystery 
surrounding man's sight has been transfig- 
ured from a realm of darkness into blue 
sky, full of stars and light. The wonder 
is not that man is so little, but that he is 
so mighty. He inhabits a world of infinite 
possibility. There appears a profound law_j 
of prayer underlying all things. In less 
mystical terms, there tends to be some 
provision to meet every genuine need or 
desire. It is as if it were written: "What- 
ever is best, that shall come to pass. Ask 
and ye shall receive." 



30 The Hope of Immortality 

Shall we trust this law of our nature 
in all outward things and stop trusting 
it in the one sphere where life becomes 
significant and most human ? The pos- 
sibilities stretch in every direction. The 
unexpected happens. Geniuses, intellec- 
tual and spiritual, come to birth. New 
ranges of character and happiness disclose 
themselves. New necessities are laid upon 
us. 

It is here that the old parable of the 
chrysalis and the butterfly has its signifi- 
cance. It is only a parable, but it happens 
beautifully to illustrate the marvellous law 
of surprises with which nature forever 
meets us. It is no objection to the action 
of nature to urge that we cannot see how 
a thing can be done. Again and again 
the thing is done that we would not have 
dared to believe possible. It is as if we 
were traversing a winding road among 
forests and hills and streams. We come 
to places where the way seems blocked 
by towering cliffs, and we march to what 



The Hope of Immortality 31 

seems the edge of a chasm. As we go, 
the way turns and opens and shows great 
stretches of view that we never had imag- 
ined. This is the nature of the world we 
live in. It is no monotonous or machine- 
made universe. Its waters break out of 
solid ice ; at a little change of their parti- 
cles they leap out of our sight and be- 
come invisible and expanding power. 
"We know not what we shall be." 

There is no article of more common 
faith than that this is somehow a moral 
world. This is the faith of the best 
thinkers. It shows no sign of abatement 
because men study science. On the con- 
trary, Franklin and Darwin and Huxley 
and Haeckel are always teaching us to 
tell the truth and be honest. Why ? Be- 
cause the world of facts and the world of 
men and the history of mankind urge tre- 
mendous lessons upon us, and all in one 
direction. "Be righteous," they say. "Be 
modest, be truthful, be humane ; show your 



32 The Hope of Immortality 

good will; do good and not evil." Here 
is the way of life. These are the very- 
values which we saw enter into the consti- 
tution of personality, as the iron and lime 
enter into our bones. They are in us 
because they are in the structure of the 
universe. How else? We made them 
ourselves no more than we made the 
iron, or created electricity, or invented 
gravitation. We are what we are because 
we participate in the moral structure 
which belongs to the universe and which 
therefore impresses itself upon us. 

An appeal to justice is often made in 
favor of immortality. Men have suffered 
innocently here, and they ought, it is said, 
to have compensating satisfaction some- 
where else. But this appeal to justice is 
in itself an expression of a faith in an ideal 
or just universe. It implies a standard 
of right. So far, then, this expectation of 
justice, sure sometime to be made manifest, 
is an instinctive tribute of human nature to 



The Hope of Immortality 33 

the conception of an ideal universe. The 
hope of immortality is wrapped up in the 
thought of a just world. 

We have referred to the idea of an " im- 
mortality of influence," which many good 
agnostics and high-minded men of science 
are pleased to recommend for the substance 
of hope. Of course this is not immortality 
at all. But the fine thought behind it is 
another tribute to a fundamental idealism 
that characterizes noble natures. Where 
is this mystery of influence that we all 
acknowledge and believe in ? It is not in 
physics or chemistry or climatic conditions. 
It is in the invisible realm of thought and 
emotion. It makes men humane and sets 
up new currents of action and will in them. 
Whoever talks of influence expresses his 
faith in a spiritual universe. Immortality 
is only another of the terms used by the 
citizens of that universe. 

I have said hardly a word about God. 
We care for facts and not for names. But 



34 The Hope of Immortality 

the play of a blind power, the motion of 
atoms, or even of an infinite multitude of 
mystic centres of life, would not constitute 
a universe. Unity itself is essentially an 
intellectual or spiritual conception. Even 
to talk of force comes near to saying will. 
What we discover in the universe and 
in ourselves as a part of the universe, — 
power, intelligence, order, purpose, integ- 
rity, unity, and especially that which we 
find in the most mature and perfect men, 
namely, righteousness and good will, — all 
this goes to describe a person. We mean 
a person in no narrow and material sense, 
but in the only sense in which personality 
can exist, that is, in the realm of thought 
and spirit. We have facts or qualities 
which cannot possibly be detached from 
one another, or supposed to exist each by 
itself. They are facts which cohere and 
tend to make a harmony. They imply a 
kernel of reality. They are facts which 
man only discovers, but does not create. 
It is under the impress of these facts, 



The Hope of Immortality 35 

peculiar to personality, that in all times 
men have tended to some thought of God. 
They cannot lightly shake off this thought. 
It stands for the only rational answer to 
what would otherwise be the blind enigma 
of existence. It is mysterious enough, but 
so also is our own existence as persons. 
It is no harder to demonstrate than is the 
fact of the personality or selfhood of our 
friends. All incongruous appearances to 
the contrary, the men around us on the 
whole impress us as persons and not as 
bodies only. Their faces, often impassive 
or expressionless or even forbidding to us, 
at times flash out messages, thoughts, and 
the conviction of a guiding purpose, and 
we believe in them, and love them accord- 
ingly in a manner that transcends the 
physical senses. So we seem to receive 
flashes of intelligence, purpose, good will, 
out of the heart of the universe, and we 
believe in it as the seat of an infinite per- 
sonal life. The mind rests in this thought, 
as it rests in no other thought. The 



36 The Hope of Immortality 

phenomena of the world fall into order under 
this thought as they will not otherwise. 
Especially as we live in fidelity to this 
thought, and try the experiments which it 
requires of us, we find life at its fullest 
degree of satisfaction. This thought of 
God seems to match with other things and 
to bind them together and to complete 
the integrity. Out of this thought of God 
grows all religion. And man seems to be 
constituted to need some kind of religion. 
It is interesting to observe that in all 
ancient pantheons, there were plenty of 
gods, but no real persons. The gods 
were like so many quarrelling and arro- 
gant men — only persons in the making. 
The modern idea of the immanent God 
at last brings us the conception of full per- 
sonality. Here is the unity of power, 
thought, beauty, and goodness. Here is 
perfect good will, manifesting itself in a 
divine purpose of bringing its creation, its 
children, to the fulfilment of personality 
like its own. Take this at first as a work- 



The Hope of Immortality 37 

ing theory, as one takes the idea of gravi- 
tation in the physical realm, and see how 
all problems, intellectual and practical, fall 
into lines of order. 

Pause here a moment and see what 
it means that man should ever have dared 
to dream of such a thought of God. Con- 
fuse all his thinking, shatter his faith, 
smother his aspirations, reduce him to 
the ashes of the barest and most narrow 
form of materialism, yet you can never 
again think meanly of the creature, risen 
out of the dust, in whose thought has been 
created the beautiful temple of such a 
faith. If he is not a child of God, then, 
as has been wittily remarked, a God ought 
to be created to account for the glorious 
audacity of this mere creature of a day. 
Again, as ever before, we find ourselves 
not between a difficult belief and an easy 
denial, but face to face with an incredible 
kind of denial, which baffles thought 
and makes science and philosophy alike 
barren. 



38 The Hope of Immortality 

The hope of immortality is no doubt an 
outgrowth or consequence of the thought 
of God. Men can never prove it by itself 
as an isolated dogma. It is a part of the 
integrity of religion itself. It is here that 
we distrust any alleged material proof of 
immortality. If our existence is not in- 
volved in the warp and woof of the spiritual 
structure of the world, if our nature is not 
of the immortal order, then while you 
might prove that the spirits of the dead 
continue to exist in some strange whisper- 
ing gallery beyond our usual reach, this 
would not be immortal life. 

See now what it means when we venture 
in any real sense to say that "we believe 
in God," in other words, that purposive 
goodness is in the heart and essence of 
the universe. We are bound to believe at 
a leap that the best possible will come to 
pass. The intelligence and the power of 
the universe are pledged to work out a 
destiny worthy of the scale of the infinite 
thought. This is involved in the integrity 



The Hope of Immortality 39 

of the universe, and in its rationality. The 
preposterous will not be suffered to happen. 
We could not respect a God, much less 
worship or love any being, who brought 
ranks of creatures into existence, shared 
the mightiest thoughts with them, inspired 
infinite hopes in them, lifted the noblest 
of them into rapturous communion with 
Himself, continually unfolded their minds 
and hearts and disclosed the unexhausted 
capacities of their being, only to drop 
them into nothingness, as children blow 
their soap-bubbles and drop them out of 
the window to burst and vanish. Is this all 
that God can do ? We do not find this 
credible. The fact is, the thought of im- 
mortality grows right out of the heart of 
our faith in theism. You cannot separate 
them from each other. 

A word may naturally be expected here 
touching the common expectation of the 
world about future rewards and punish- 
ments. Justice demands, it is thought, 



40 The Hope of Immortality 

that the unequal conditions of human life 
shall sometime be equalized. Without 
venturing to claim so much as this, with- 
out daring to assail the moral order as 
unjust even in this life, insisting that ex- 
cept in a moral world it is meaningless 
to talk of justice or injustice, we are bound 
to say that human existence at least 
points toward and seems to call for some 
adequate fulfilment. We see in each life 
the beginnings of the making of a person ; 
we interpret even failures and crimes into 
the terms of moral discipline ; we look for 
an outcome worthy of the cost and pain. 
No outcome except the final winning of 

personality satisfies our minds. We ask 
r 
for no childish system of rewards ; we do 

want, by a deep law of our being, to be 
of some use in the universe. The only 
way to be of use is through the growth 
vof our personality. But the life of this 
world is not enough to fulfil our personal- 
ity — a name to describe a sort of infinite 
growth. 



The Hope of Immortality 41 

The hope of immortality is not a mere 
subject of thought ; it has to do with 
a man's power and essential well-being. 
We ask what the factors are that consti- 
tute a normal or healthy life, or, in other 
words, what makes a life most efficient 
and happy ? One of these factors clearly 
is a righteous purpose ; another is good 
will ; the element of hope is another. 
A man may live without hope, but he can 
never be at his best so. Take away all 
hope and you have diminished his life^ 
power. 

May not the man, however, have hope 
in his heart and yet not in any sense think 
of immortality ? Doubtless, indeed, many 
persons find hope in the notion of a post- 
humous influence, or in a dream of coming 
fame, as children in a beleaguered and 
doomed city might think of to-morrow's 
play. My point is that hope, while it 
may live in a vague way without any 
definite object, tends to die at the rootsj 
with the denial of immortality. This kind 



42 The Hope of Immortality 

of denial, if outright, becomes, the more 
one considers it, a fatal limitation. The 
larger a man's nature, the more you have 
hurt him the moment you have cut off all 
sky view, as it were, from his sight and 
shut his soul within finite walls. Suffer 
him a bare window-pane through which 
a star may shine, and his soul will live. 
Deny him all rays of the infinite possibili- 
ties, and the man will never be the same 
in moral or spiritual health. We know 
this by experience, having made experi- 
ments with ourselves and having swayed 
at times from the mood of hope to the 
mood of utter doubt. It was as if the 
spiritual temperature had gone down to- 
ward the line of death. 

The fact that the hope of immortality 
quickens the flow of all our interests and 
makes life seem worth while, the fact that 
the man with this hope in his heart is more 
alive and effective, and that the denial of 
the great hope lowers the moral temper- 



The Hope of Immortality 43 

ature, does not demonstrate immortality. 
But the fact is very significant. So far 
as we believe in a universe, here is one 
of the harmonies that go to constitute it. 
So far as we believe in the intellectual 
integrity of the world, here is another 
point out of many, where it is really 
easier to believe that nature is true in 
stirring hopes in us and making them 
essential to our best life, than that she is 
playing false with us. Do not the biolo- 
gists tell us to trust in whatever makes 
life richer or more effective ? 

This factor of hope is specially bound 
up with our social and moral activity. 
Granted the hope of immortality, we have 
a different kind of world from that world 
from which hope is closed. It is as different 
as a voyage to a port on a splendid ship 
is different from floating on a loose raft 
in mid ocean. This is not to deny that 
heroism might be shown on the raft, for 
example, by dropping off the raft to give 



44 The Hope of Immortality 

more room and food for the survivors. 
But no one would exert himself very 
much to propel the hopeless raft, unless 
a ship appeared on the horizon. So while 
we might and would maintain the kind 
of negative morality which consists in 
doing no injury to our neighbors, unless 
in an atmosphere of hope we should lack 
the virile and positive moral earnestness 
which urges men to arduous and costly 
efforts for liberty, for democracy, for new 
standards of humanity. We do not need 
to say " Let us eat and drink for to-mor- 
row we die." If we are noble, we can 
never say this. But the very word " no- 
ble " appeals to the thought of the sacred- 
ness and significance of human life, to the 
idea of spiritual values, to the hope of 
human progress. To deny immortality 
is to deny the very values to the sense of 
which all heroism appeals. Who could 
feel the slightest enthusiasm in efforts to 
crowd the land with millions of people, all 
furnished with model houses and a living 



The Hope of Immortality 45 

wage, but believing nothing and hoping 
nothing beyond their brief span of years, 
more than the comfortable cattle on which 
they fed? Better, we say, to have been 
thrown to the lions in the Coliseum, better 
to have marched to death with Joan of Arc, 
better to have been mobbed with Garrison 
or Lovejoy, than to live in a world where 
the eternal visions had perished. But 
when we say this, we go over to that side 
where hope springs immortal again and 
will not die. 

This is to say that all the magnificent 
words which make literature, and ring 
through literature and poetry like battle- 
cries to rally men to their highest modes 
of action, — justice, truth, virtue, heroism, 
the good, the best, — such words, be- 
speaking man's spiritual nature, group 
themselves with the words " hope " and 
" immortality.' ' They stand or fall to- 
gether. Raise your estimate of one of 
these words, and you unconsciously raise 



46 The Hope of Immortality 

your estimate of all. Depreciate any one 
of them, and you depreciate all alike. 
Set a price or a limit upon the worth of 
virtue and you have limited your vision 
of all things hoped for. Set a finite limit 
upon hope, and you have set the same 
finite limit upon virtue or truth. You 
have even depreciated also the value of 
logic and reason. 

We may think of three departments 
that make the unity of life, — thought, 
feeling, and conduct or practice. There 
is no subject which does not fall under 
these three dimensions. There is no 
subject which we really understand un- 
less we know it in each of these three 
aspects. Even with the study of mathe- 
matics, goes the natural sense of admira- 
tion at its beautiful exactness and its 
infinite ranges, as well as an impulse to 
experiment in the handling of concrete 
numbers and forms. The hope of immor- 
tality, likewise, is not a mere mode of 



The Hope of Immortality 47 

feeling any more than it is a startling 
subject of intellectual curiosity; it also 
touches the practical life. Each man has 
his choice, either to live as if the hope 
of immortality were a delusion, or as if 
it were valid. Here are two different 
modes of conduct. The same man with 
this hope veritably added to his posses- 
sions is a different man in temper and 
behavior from the man he would be with 
this hope subtracted from his being. See 
how much this means. Let us state our 
argument in the following form : — 

It is generally agreed that no physicist 
has demonstrated or can possibly de- 
monstrate the denial of immortality. He 
can no more deny than he can demon- 
strate. On the other hand, every one 
must admit that on the side of man's 
essential humanity, there are a whole 
series of striking considerations which 
have always suggested some profound 
fact underlying the thought of immor- 
tality. There is therefore plenty of room 



48 The Hope of Immortality 

to hope. To say the least, it is as intelligent 
to hope as to deny. We may then legiti- 
mately make experiments with ourselves 
and watch their outcome. We can take 
the idea of immortality as a working 
theory, as we may and often do take 
theism. We may live a day, or a month, 
or a year, on the basis of this theory, and 
act accordingly. We act thus as the chil- 
dren of eternity. We treat and respect 
ourselves, we treat and respect other 
men as beings of an immortal nature. 
All meanness, injustice, selfishness, is 
straightway ruled out of our lives. Anx- 
ieties and fears cease for the man who 
conceives of himself as upon an im- 
mortal course. We have immediately 
lighted upon a great secret of the happy 
^ life. No man ever truly made the sort of 
practical experiment in conduct that befits 
the hope of immortality without a distinct 
lift in the range of his being. Neither 
does he in this kind of experiment shut 
his eyes to, much less deny, a single 



The Hope of Immortality 49 

known fact. He simply puts his em- 
phasis upon the facts that make him a 
man, rather than upon the facts that 
constitute his body. 

We are here probably using the same 
kind of reasoning which Professor Will- 
iam James applies under the somewhat 
obscure name of "pragmatism." Dr. 
Washington Gladden calls it " The Prac- 
tice of Immortality." We discover that 
a man cannot possibly behave too nobly. 
The nearer his conduct becomes to that 
of an immortal being, the better it is for 
him in heart, mind, body, and all. He is 
thus most closely a complete man and at 
the height of his personality. 

Now, we have no other test of truth 
than that it is whatever fits or makes 
harmony, or, more plainly, works well. 
We tend to believe in a thing if, without 
fatal drawbacks, it is good for use. We 
believe in most human propositions on this 
basis. We believe, for example, in the 
monogamous family, in popular education, 



50 The Hope of Immortality 

or in the democratic theory of govern- 
ment. We follow a good clew as far as 
it will carry us. So in practical conduct, 
we follow the hope of immortality. It not 
only makes the harmony or unity which 
we need in our thinking, but, better yet, 
it fits into practice at once and goes to 
make life effective and whole. 

Professor James has written on " The 
Will to Believe/ ' We suspect that these 
words and the form of his argument must 
carry a prejudice to many minds. We 
scorn to believe merely by force of will. 
We will not consent to believe or to hope, 
unless for good reason. We will not be- 
lieve a thing merely because it is pleasant. 
But we purpose none the less to be good 
investigators. We are quite willing there- 
fore to take the attitude of hope — as 
legitimate an attitude as that of doubt; 
we take it, not by sheer force of will, but 
so far as grand spiritual considerations 
and humane sympathies naturally urge us 
toward it. We will watch what happens 



The Hope of Immortality 51 

to us; we will be on our guard against 
false conclusions. We will not shut our- 
selves away from the climate of hope on 
the ground that it is a healthy climate to 
live in. Other things being equal, this is 
precisely the reason why we should live in it. 

What if it should prove that the hope 
of immortality grows naturally out of the 
practice of a certain worthy kind of life, 
and cannot be easily had except upon the 
terms of such a life ? This is to say that 
immortality belongs to persons. This is to 
say that its quality begins here and now in 
so far as men become persons. The lower 
and the less unified the personality, the 
less reason has any one to be persuaded 
of immortality. The more we care for" 
personality, the higher we conceive it, the 
more we grow toward it, the more instinc- 
tively we are possessed with the thought 
that it cannot die. 

This accounts for our swaying moods 
from hope to doubt and back again. This 



52 The Hope of Immortality 

accounts for the differences of attitude 
between various men. Do we drop to a 
vulgar mood and think in terms of bricks 
or money ? In our lowest moods no argu- 
ment for immortality avails much with us. 
Do we catch sight of some great personal- 
ity, — an Emerson, a Channing, Marcus 
Aurelius ? Do we see for the moment 
what such a personality is worth beyond 
all visible treasures? Then in this our 
highest mood whole ranges of vision move 
us to hope. Show us persons enough, stir 
us often enough to aspire to be persons, 
and we should habitually expect immortal- 
ity. In other words, the hope of immor- 
tality tends to be a sort of measure of our 
spiritual health and growth. 

Is not this, again, what we should ex- 
pect in a moral universe ? The hope of 
immortality is not a cheap thing; it is 
costly. It is not an idea that can be had 
merely for the reading of books ; it cannot 
be demonstrated in an evening at a lecture 
hall by " materializations " ; it cannot even 



The Hope of Immortality 53 

be had on the strength of the bodily re- 
appearance of the best man who ever 
lived. It depends upon character and 
grows out of character. It goes with the 
daily practice of immortality. Otherwise, 
it is only at best a matter of temperament, 
tradition, and hearsay. 

A very important consideration follows. 
All that the reason can do with any prob- 
lem touching conduct is to give advice. 
The reason can pronounce that a certain 
course seems on the whole worth while to 
entertain and pursue. Its advice is like a 
permissive bill enacted by a legislature. 
Whether one takes such advice or not, 
depends upon a distinct motion of the will. 
So now with the thought of immortality, 
the reason gives its permission to move in 
the direction of a magnificent hope. " Go 
over, if you will," says the reason, "to the 
side of the hope, and let the hope sway 
you. Do not fear any longer to let your- 
selves go." Many persons need to take 



54 The Hope of Immortality 

this counsel to heart. The reason has 
done all that it can. It unties their chains 
and sets them free. The way of the open 
sky lies before them. Let them set forth, 
and take the good of their hope, and 
see what comes of it. Hope, like every 
other normal function, grows by exercise. 
Right as we were to pause and refuse to 
move, while the directing mind asked time 
to consider, as soon as the mind gives us 
even as much as the freedom of a mighty 
" Perhaps " or " Suppose," we now become 
wise in taking all the freedom that belongs 
to us. For we are not creatures of reason 
alone, but of heart and will and life 
also. 

We may now fairly ask whether there is 
not a certain reality in the old-fashioned 
idea of authority, namely, that certain per- 
sons have been endowed with the right to 
teach their fellows the doctrine of immor- 
tality ? We answer, Yes, there are au- 
thorities, albeit not infallible, touching every 



The Hope of Immortality 55 

subject of human interest. Thus we listen 
to the testimony of every good man who 
speaks out of his experience of the facts 
of the good life. We pass judgment on 
the comparative sanity and soundness of 
men who speak on this subject, as on every 
other subject. On certain points we find 
a growing tendency to a consensus of ex- 
perience and opinion. Such a consensus 
of the noble and high-minded does rightly 
move our minds, not to follow in blindness, 
but to listen with respect. 

Here is the authority of such a Master 
in the good life as Jesus was. Did he feel 
within himself the stirrings of an immortal 
nature ? Did he have visions of person- 
ality for which this earthly life seemed a 
mere beginning ? We are impressed that 
he was a real man and spoke out of genu- 
ine experience. What if he and others saw 
more than the average man has yet seen ? 
At our best, we tend to see and to say very 
similar things. Whatever any human be- 
ing has tried and discovered for himself to 



56 The Hope of Immortality 

be real, becomes authoritative to persuade 
us to make trial of the same. In this sense 
there was never so much authority for the 

b idea of immortality as there is to-day. The 
world never had access to so many of the 
lives of the wise, the noble, and the true- 
hearted, the men of veritable religion, as 
it has to-day. With all degrees of caution 
and assurance the cheering voices come to 
us of those who sing as they go with their 
faces to the light. Those who give this 
testimony are not the selfish, they are not 
the light-minded, they wish no mere gift 
of years ; they desire no idle heaven ; they 

i pray rather to be useful ; they have lived 
the life of good will, and they trust that 
good will is the most enduring force in the 
universe. They go out into the mystery 
as those ready to do the deeds of good 
will forever. They approve themselves to 
us as worthy to be called citizens of the 
universe, for there is no conceivable place 
where they would not be at home. They 
seem to us of the nature of the infinite life 



The Hope of Immortality 57 

at the heart of the world. We do not 
think that we shall be misled in following 
their lead. 

I have no idea of making a chain of 
so many links to compel assent. On the 
contrary, I have simply tried to set forth 
the mass of considerations that always and 
increasingly urge my own mind, even in 
its most sceptical moods, to face toward 
the way of hope. I have dealt with facts 
at every step, not indeed facts that can be 
studied with the help of the microscope, 
but nevertheless the solid facts in which 
human life consists. What impresses me 
in that these facts all go together and 
point one way. They are cumulative. 
They belong to a certain unity which you 
cannot break without doing violence to 
every essential part of the whole. The 
hope of immortality arises out of this 
unity of thought, feeling, and conduct. 
My conviction is that it is here, because it 
is true. 



58 The Hope of Immortality 

This is really the same kind of reason- 
ing that leads us to believe in the wonder 
and mystery of a physical universe. We 
do not believe in this wonderful unity 
because we can wholly demonstrate it by 
physical evidence. It is not even an ap- 
parent unity to a child or a savage. It is 
a unity which nature doubtless suggests, 
but we have to admit that it hardly could 
be at all except for the demand of our 
minds to discover unity. Our faith in a 
universe is not merely the outgrowth of 
the observation of outward phenomena; 
it is also a sort of intellectual or spiritual 
necessity, without which the mind is baf- 
fled and stupefied. So, too, we find that 
the hope of immortality belongs to that 
deeper unity of thought and conception, of 
which our interpretation of the outward 
nature is merely an image. 

Finally, the tremendous question recurs, 
How can these things be ? This is the 
underlying mystery in all life. In this 



The Hope of Immortality 59 

world of wonderful and dramatic possibili- 
ties, where the facts are daily more start- 
ling than any miracle, we not only do not 
need to know precisely how immortality 
may be, but we suspect that we are better 
off with the hope than we could be with a 
kind of knowledge, for which we are not 
yet ready or sufficiently developed. As it 
is well for the child that he cannot be told 
the experiences of manhood and parent- 
hood, so it is well for men generally to be 
obliged to see the future as we see dis- 
tant mountains in a haze of cloud-land. 
"Clouds and darkness are round about" 
them. It is enough that rifts of sunlight 
are in the clouds and the broad bases of 
the hills are there, whether we see their 
summits or not. 

Meantime golden hours of vision come 
to us in this present life, when we are at 
our best, and our faculties work together in 
harmony. There are times when intelli- 
gence is full and quick, our feelings are 
healthy, matching great thoughts, and good 



60 The Hope of Immortality 

will possesses us. In these best hours the 
mere limits of space and time seem small ; 
we appear to belong to a divine universe, 
we are admitted to share in the universal 
thought, we feel the unity of all things, we 
are at one through sympathy with all who 
live, toil, suffer, and aspire. We follow 
one purpose of beneficence. This is the 
sanest as well as the highest of human 
experiences. It purifies us, it both rests 
and inspires us for better work, more con- 
scientious, wiser, more accurate, more dis- 
interested, more effectual. We are in 
such hours most truly ourselves as indi- 
viduals, or persons, while we seem to 
belong to the Universal Life — the one 
Person that constitutes the world. Is it 
not this of which Wordsworth writes ? — 

" that blessed mood, 
In which the burthen of the mystery, 
In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world, 
Is lightened, — that serene and blessed mood, 
In which the affections gently lead us on, — 



The Hope of Immortality 61 

Until the breath of this corporeal frame 
And even the motion of our human blood 
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep 
In body, and become a living soul ; 
While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
We see into the life of things." 

Does any one imagine the food which we 
eat to be real, and these great experiences 
of life to be less real ? 

Here, then, is a sort of earnest or fore- 
taste of the immortal life. We surmise 
that immortality is like this. At our high- 
est and best we have discovered the qual- 
ity of immortality. We are content; in 
view of certain supreme experiences which 
life offers here and now we say, "All is 
well." We cannot doubt that whatever 
comes will also be well. This is the faith 
of religion, growing out of the most impres- 
sive facts. This faith grows equally out of 
the highest reaches of our intelligence. 



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